"The Burning Glow" by Luke H. Davis

Cameron Ballack is back. And he’s traipsing all over where I used to bike. 

Ballack is the fictional wheelchair-bound detective created by St. Louis-based writer Luke H. Davis. In previous books (and there’s been a gap of some years), he and his team were based in St. Charles County, Missouri, part of metropolitan St. Louis. In his new outing, entitled The Burning Glow, Ballack is now the lead detective for the Special Investigating Department, which operates across the metro St. Louis region. (St. Louis actually does have something similar that operates across jurisdictional lines called the Major Case Squad.)

 

What Ballack and his team are pulled into is a car bombing in the part of the city of St. Louis known as “Little Bosnia,” home to numerous immigrants who fled the war in the 1990s. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Want to Find Yourself? Volunteer in Your Church Nursery – Cameron McAllister at Front Porch Republic.

 

Facts About Euthanasia in Canada – Tim Challies.

 

Growling in a corner: Samuel Johnson’s lost years – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Defining Ideology – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane

If I have one vivid memory of high school junior English class, it would be the classic coming-of-age assignment of The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. In the spring, anyone could spot a sophomore, because inevitably each and every one of us was carrying our paperback edition of the classic novel about the Civil War. It was assigned at the same time we were studying the Civil War in American history.  

Crane published the novel in 1895, two years after he’d published the book that put him on the American literary map – Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the story of a prostitute. Crane belonged to the Naturalist, Realist, Symbolist, or Impressionist School, depending upon which critic you ask. The story of a prostitute had not been done before, at least not in a way that made Maggie something of a heroine. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Treason of the Intellectuals – Niall Ferguson at The Free Press.

 

An Emerging Image of General Lee at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War. 

Belle Boyd: Cleopatra of the Secession

Belle Boyd (1844-1900) was 16 when the Civil War began. A member of a prominent family in Martinsburg, Virginia (it became part of WestVirginia), she’d been in boarding school in Baltimore when the Southern states began to secede. She made he way back home, and when the war began, she promptly decided to do whatever she could to help the South win. 

She became a spy.

 

Her hometown afforded more than ample opportunity; like doe so many other towns in contested areas, control of the town changed hands several times. She made no secret of her sympathies; she did make secret her listening in on Union plans and army movements. In one particularly amazing incident, she braved gun and cannon fire in rushing across a large field to bring news of Union army reserves to Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

“The Little Church Around the Corner,” the Civil War, and the Draft Riots – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era.

 

“Brother Cally, They Have Killed Me”: Morgan’s Raiders in Lebanon, Kentucky – Carline Davis at Emerging Civil War.

"The Civil War: The First Year by Those Who Lived It"

The refusal of Fort Sumter to surrender and the subsequent shelling by South Carolinian authorities might have been the immediate cause of the American Civil War, but it had been a long time coming. In retrospect, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Mexican War of the mid 1840s, which opened up vast new tracts of land for settlement; the Compromise of 1850; the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Dred Scott decision in 1857; and John Brown’s Raid in 1859 all edged, pushed, or shoved the nation towards an internal military war. The spark that lit the fuse was the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, followed by the secession of several Southern states.  

Documentation abounds. Few things occupied American minds in the 19^th century like slavery. And Americans expressed their thoughts and deeds in diaries, letters, journals, newspapers, speeches, laws, and court decisions. Under the auspices of The Library of America, that documentation has been curated and published in four volumes collectively called The Civil War, edited by Brooks Simpson, Stephen Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean. Each volume is devoted to a specific year; volume 1 is The Civil War: The First Year by Those Who Lived It.

To continue reading, please see my post at Dancing Priest.

Some Additional Readings

 

Echoes of Reconstruction: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in Defense of the 14^th Amendment – Patrick Young at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Commanding the Regiment: Galusha Pennypacker, the Civil War’s Youngest General – Meg Groeling at Emerging Civil War. 

"Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer" by G. Mosley Sorrell

This memoir of the Civil War, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer by G. Moxley Sorrell (1838-1901), was a genuine pleasure to read. Published some 35 years after the war ended, it is not a typical military memoir. Sorrel himself says as much at the beginning; he leaves the discussion of most military strategy and tactics to others. But he occupied a significant position. For much of the war, he was the chief of staff for Brigadier General James Longstreet.

 

He was part of numerous battles in the eastern theater of the war: both battles of Bull Run (Manassas), Seven Pines, Sharpsburg (Antietam), Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the eastern Tennessee campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

A School of Strength and Character – Tanner Greer at Palladium Magazine. 

 

Captured, Imprisoned: The Experiences of Union Civilian Families during the Second Battle of Winchester – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War. 

 

“This is no place for you!”…A father and son at Cedar Mountain – Mike Block at Emerging Civil War.

The Civil War Abroad: How the Great American Conflict Reached Overseas by Charles Priestley – reviewed by Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.

“If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania: Vol. 1” by Scott Mingus & Eric Wittenberg

When you get the compressed view of history in school – too much to cover and not enough time – you tend to think events like battles just happened. Two armies showed up and fought. But as Scott Mingus and Eric Wittenbergdemonstrate in If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania: The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac March to Gettysburg, battles like Gettysburg have lead-ups, clashes and conflicts, and after-events.  

In other words, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia didn’t just show up in Gettysburg and fight George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. In the month leading up to the battle, Lee’s army moved in three substantive routes toward Pennsylvania. The approval to take the war into the North was given by the Confederate government in late May, and Lee wasted no time. By June 1, his army began to move.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

"Eyewitness to the Civil War" by Stephen Hyslop

Sometimes I’m a sucker for coffee table books. And sometimes they turn out to be more than coffee table books.  

In 2006, National Geographic published Eyewitness to the Civil War: The Complete History of the Civil War from Secession to Reconstruction. Written by Stephen Hyslop and edited by Neil Kagan, the book appears to be a classic book meant for the coffee table. And it could certainly find a home there. But it turns out to be a lot more.

 

The book is like a documentary in print. It provides a basic (and well-written) account of the war from beginning to end, highlighting the major battles, developments, home fronts, and international repercussions. It tells the stories of generals and soldiers, slaveowners and slaves, and farmers and townspeople who lived the war. It shows how an increasingly split nation finally erupted into the violence of civil war.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.